"Have you done?"
"Naturally you're offended," he went on, with a sudden softening of his
voice. "But if you think it fairly over, I believe I may get you to own
that it can't have been very pleasant for me to speak?"
Her face cleared, and she looked frankly at him.
"I suppose it was not," she allowed. "Did you do it on my account, or
because you disliked any one you had to do with being laughed at?" But
before he had recovered from this rebuke, she added with a certain
sweetness which was noticeable in her at times, "Still, you must not
think that I am angry. I suppose I was for a moment, but it was foolish
of me, because you were right, quite right, to say out what was in your
mind. And I dare say, too, that you are right in what you think. I
suppose it seems so much more important to me than to them all--not on
my own account, but because we feel we are making a beginning--that I
have let myself talk too much about it."
"So that you forgive me?" he said, quite humbly for him.
She laughed.
"I forgive you. I dare say that by-and-by I shall have reached the
height of being even grateful. But now you must let me go, because if I
am not to talk I must work all the harder."
"You can always talk to me," he said eagerly.
"Oh no," she said, escaping, with a shake of her head. "I must break
myself of a bad habit."
If Claudia had been mortified by his plain speaking, there was no doubt
that she took the lesson to heart. There was no more of that somewhat
masterful enthusiasm with which she had up to this time indulged her
hearers. She became, instead, extremely reticent, and not an allusion
to the college or to professional duties passed her lips. Fenwick was
half pleased, half vexed, because this was not the Claudia he knew. He
found himself thinking of her with persistence which amazed him. He
could not flatter himself that she was angry with him, but would have
welcomed her anger as proof that in some way or another he affected her.
Why did he not? He raged at the thought of caring that he should, but
he could not deny her indifference.
The days went by; Claudia still kept her word. She went quietly about
the work she had in hand, but would not talk of it--even to Fenwick.
This annoyed him, and one evening he threw himself into a chair by her
side, and told her so.
"Women always go into extremes," he grumbled, when he had made his
complaint.
Claudia looked at him and laughed.
"I never knew any one so difficult to please," she said. "I thought I
was carrying out my lessons."
"So you are," he replied impatiently, "but you needn't practise your
lessons upon everybody. I ought to be an exception."
"Why?"
"Because I am not a stranger like these other people."
"Oh," said Claudia, laughing still more unfeelingly; "I never knew any
one make quite so much out of a fortnight before! Wasn't it a fortnight
that you had known me?"
"I believe I have known you always," he returned hardily. "Days--
weeks--what have they to do with the matter?"
"Is that a compliment?"
"Uncompromising truth. Don't you see that it gives me the power of
understanding you?"
This is an appeal which rarely fails with women, and Fenwick knew how to
accentuate it by fixing his dark eyes upon the girl, and flinging an
intensity of will into his gaze. She merely lifted her eyebrows.
"I dare say. I don't think any one ever found me mysterious."
He was angrily aware that she spoke truly. There were few complexities
in her character to baffle any one, but there was for him a baffling
directness and simplicity against which his efforts beat themselves in
vain. She met them with an indifference which perpetually incited him
to break it down.
Lady Wilmot was a little disappointed that Claudia did not carry out the
promise of her first hours, for she was a small lady who liked nothing
so well as amusement, and had foreseen a rich supply. With the other
two or three who were staying there the girl was popular in her own way,
which, however, kept her apart except at meals and in the evening. In
truth, although she had taken Fenwick's hint both lightly and
good-humouredly, it gave her the sort of shock one gets by running full
tilt against a wall. She had been anxious to impress those about her
with the gravity of woman's work, to see that they put it on a level
with man's, to shake off the faintest accusation of frivolity; and, to
accomplish this end she was prepared to be pointed at and scorned. With
such lofty aspirations nothing could be well more humiliating than to
find herself considered a bore. Here lay the point of Fenwick's moral,
it was from this he wanted to save her. "A bore, a bore, a bore!" She
scourged herself with the taunt, and vowed there should be no more of
it, for to the young, ridicule is intolerable.
But the resolution made her feel curiously lonely. The girls at the
college, mostly reformers, all enthusiasts, largely impressed with the
part they had to play, and occasionally in more open revolt, incited and
encouraged each other over their work, which seemed to them of supreme
importance. When Claudia came out of this atmosphere it still clung
about her, so that she babbled of it gravely, as she had babbled to her
companions. Now she was sure she had been a bore, and the thought
stung. It made her, also, silent and reserved, although this was so
unlike her nature that she only got at it by sheer force of will.
Fenwick had certainly offered himself as sympathetic, but she was shrewd
enough to reflect, "What he warned me against, he feels himself. He is
ready to talk because I am a girl and not bad-looking, but only on that
account, not because he really cares." And then thought flew to Harry
Hilton, not with the wish that she had given him a different answer, but
with absolute certainty that he would never have considered her a bore.